Search

Subscribe to Podcast

Become a Patreon!

Love the podcast? Wish you could help support the show? Now you can! Head over to patreon.com/literature to sign up for a monthly subscription. You can give anything from a dollar a month to as much as you’d like. No donations too big or too small – we’ll use them to help with our costs and expenses. Thank you!

139 “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka

In 1922, the miserable genius Franz Kafka wrote a short story, Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist), about another miserable genius: a man whose “art” is to live in a cage and display his fasting ability to crowds that don’t always appreciate what he is trying to do. Inspired by actual historical figures, though suffused with nostalgia and Kafka’s penetrating insight, the story asks us to reconsider our conceptions of art and spectacle, life and death, hunger and humanity. Host Jacke Wilson is joined by superguest Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club, to feast on one of the greatest short stories ever written.